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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22968247">Hope This Doesn't Awaken Anything In Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius/pseuds/Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius'>Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Adventure Zone (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Post-Finale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 13:55:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,166</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22968247</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius/pseuds/Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stern and Barclay have an important conversation.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barclay/Agent Stern (The Adventure Zone)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>123</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hope This Doesn't Awaken Anything In Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote my balance fic while listening to amnesty and I wrote the amnesty one while listening to balance, so if the characterization is off, whoops!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Joseph was not one to lose his cool under pressure. He wasn’t the kind of person who would give up on a mission just when things get hard, he wasn’t the type to get caught up in the details of what he was doing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had spent years chasing bigfoot, for Pete’s sake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But now, here he was, mission completed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he didn’t know what to do with himself.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a high stakes mission: the highest stakes, even, as apparently not only Earth but also another planet entirely were in danger.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t something he could afford to mess up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And </span>
  <em>
    <span>yet, </span>
  </em>
  <span>here he was, unable to think about anything other than what he’d just learned about one of his closest friends. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Also the fact that he’d just lost his job after finishing his job, but that was less important.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What was </span>
  <em>
    <span>more </span>
  </em>
  <span>important was the fact that Barclay, a man he’d thought he’d known so well, so close and indispensable a friend, had gotten him to sacrifice his job.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What was more important was that he’d taken off his bracelet, the one that Joseph now realized he’d never seen off his person, and had transformed into the very thing he’d been searching for.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was poetic, really. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because for all this time, he’d been looking for Barclay in another way. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was not ashamed to admit that there was something about that man’s rugged charm that he found fascinating.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something about the softness with which he laughed, the caring with which he cooked, and yet the look that seemed to make him an outdoorsman more than anything.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He always looked like he was just a little bit out of his element, like the world was slightly to the right for him and he could never quite find his bearings. Something about the dissonance between the way he saw the world and the way Barclay saw the world was something Joseph couldn’t get over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was intriguing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It may or may not have been why he’d found himself returning to Amnesty Lodge after the initial stay, even though it was fairly clear that they didn’t want him there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d always been disappointed by it, unsure of what it was they surely had to be hiding there to not want him there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now, he finally had the answers he’d been looking for.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Still, he had way more questions than before.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d watched his friend pick up a crate with one hand and now was kind of ashamed to admit what that particular bit had done to him, but he’d get over it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What he needed was to be able to talk to Barclay.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d been waiting in the lobby of Amnesty Lodge for an hour, head down on the table, pondering whether he should be there at all or not.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A hand landed on his shoulder, alerting him to someone’s presence. He turned his head to see Barclay standing next to him, smiling nervously.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hi there, uh, Joseph. It’s been a second. Do you want to, I dunno, talk in the hot springs with me? If you don’t have a bathing suit I know we have some laying around here somewhere.” Barclay offered, shrugging weakly, rubbing the back of his neck, clearly nervous. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Joseph Stern smiled up at him. </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The moment he’d been out of Barclay’s sight, he’d practically run to his suitcase, thrown it open, and had rummaged through everything in there in the desperate hope that there was a decent enough set of trunks in there. Fortunately, he’d found something plain, a navy blue set of swim trunks with a white stripe running down the side, and had been able to join Barclay in the hot springs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, that meant he was joining Barclay in the hot springs, and had to see him partially bare.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And had to think about how he might be partially bear, as well.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So.” Barclay started.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’d like to start out by apologizing for making your job so much harder than it needed to be.” Barclay explained, relaxing in the water and letting his eyes shut.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I could say the same for you.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And, listen, I know you’ve compiled a lot of stuff on me, who I used to be in the past, but that’s the past, okay? It was before I had such a connection to Kepler and I did things I’m not proud of, I may have hurt some people, I may have pulled a gun on an 11 year old, I might have killed some wildlife, but that wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>me, </span>
  </em>
  <span>that wasn’t conscious—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You pulled a gun on an 11 year old?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s not im—well, actually, that is important. I had to get somewhere, it was an entire ordeal, I never would’ve actually hurt him. It’s a funny story, really…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>More than anything, Stern wanted to hear just what was so funny about this story, but apparently, as he’d been in this conversation for maybe a minute, he could no longer prevent his thoughts from drifting. It never happened with anyone else, but with Barclay, it took everything in him to gather concentration and prevent his mind from telling him, for the millionth time, how well groomed his beard was, or how his eyes crinkled near the edges when he smiled, how his hands animated as he told a story and his face moved to recollect all the emotions he’d been feeling at the time, the sinew of his strong arms or the way his shoulders moved, or…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything, really, was distracting.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to go get coffee?” He blurted out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Excuse me?” Barclay laughed nervously. “I make us coffee all the time.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, let me try that again. Do you want to go on a date? With me? Sometime? Maybe? Because, I don’t know, I was planning on asking you anyway but I was so busy with my job but now I’m fired so I have free time and you’re bigfoot and I thought that would make things weird and maybe it did but I don’t think it did and I just want to know if maybe you wanted to go on a date with me. Date me. Sometime.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“...If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>like </span>
  </em>
  <span>the fact that I’m bigfoot.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So, that’s a no, then.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Barclay shook his head. “I never said it was a no. I just think it’s funny that you only asked me out after you figured out you’d been trying to catch me and arrest me for years.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I did a lot of thinking about it, and a lot of soul-searching, and—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s adorable.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think it’s just so cute that you’re asking. I wanted to date you for a long time, sure, but I couldn’t exactly do that for obvious reasons. It’s heartwarming that you want to date me now. You’re ridiculous.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And thus it was that Joseph found himself happily kissing bigfoot in the hot springs of Kepler, West Virginia. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I just figured the best date to put this up would be February 29th. It just feels right for Amnesty. Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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